Good Time review: Robert Pattinson hits his stride as agent of chaos

★★★★ MA, 101 minutes

It's almost a decade since Robert Pattinson delivered his breakthrough role as the pale, brooding vampire Edward Cullen in the original Twilight movie, but it's only now that he's playing a true bloodsucker. As Constantine "Connie" Nikas, a petty criminal with a talent for on-the-run improvisation, the English actor gives an electric performance rich in manipulation, selfishness and feverish fixes in Good Time, a compelling take on the New York street crime drama.

Gaunt in the face so that his probing eyes start to look like beacons that lock on to a target, Connie is first seen when he crashes a therapy session for his brother Nick (co-director Benny Safdie), a bulky, mentally challenged and hearing deficient young man whose evaluation answers suggest a child-like stubbornness, a latent temper and yet a trusting nature. Connie has a better outcome for Nick: a bank robbery.

Connie's love for Nick is genuine. He reminds him to stay close like a carer would, and displays physical affection. "It's almost over," Connie gently tells Nick mid-heist, an act of reassurance almost absurd given the risk. It's to Pattinson's credit that you slowly start to realise that Nick's absolute belief in Connie is an ongoing act of affirmation that the latter needs. Connie's love is laced with self-interest.

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Bank robberies in New York's boroughs have been going wrong since Al Pacino's Sonny and John Cazale's Sal walked into the First Brooklyn Savings Bank in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon and never made it out. Sidney Lumet's film, along with the street hassles and cold cruelty of Abel Ferrara's crime films, are part of Good Time's DNA, albeit with a significant mutation.

Robert Pattinson as Connie even makes 16-year-old Crystal, played by Taliah Webster, an accomplice in Good Time.Credit:Hi Gloss Entertainment

Josh and Benny Safdie have been finding and telling stories on New York's fringes for a decade now. It was their previous feature, 2014's Heaven Knows What, a tale of combustible young street addicts based on the life experiences of lead actor Arielle Holmes, which attracted Pattinson, whose list of directors after he cleared the many Twilight sequels shows a sharp eye: David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog, David Michod and James Gray.

That film's mix of Italian neo-realism and formal observation has been tightened to an urgent pulse in Good Time. The close-ups capture Connie's obsessive energy, while sharply defining those he in turn encounters. He drags the camera – and the audience – in his wake, especially once he and Nick are separated when the police arrest the latter, and there's a disconcerting tempo to the score – alternately burbling and blaring – from electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never.

The film's momentum doesn't preclude astute observation. When Connie needs bail money he fronts Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is nominally his girlfriend and is mostly concerned with taking Connie on a holiday and ducking the mother (Rose Gregorio) she still lives with. Corey is only in Connie's slipstream for a brief time – he ditches her when she's no use – but she's so sharply drawn and played that there could be an entire film in the character.

The Safdies put the likes of Pattinson and Leigh alongside non-actors they've previously used, such as former street kid Buddy Duress, who plays Ray, a veritable list of bad decisions who gets entangled with Connie. The filmmakers, along with Josh Safdie's co-writer Ronald Bronstein, are never far from the city's realities, such as the way that Nick, with his echo of Lenny from Of Mice and Men, is automatically deposited into a prison system he's palpably not equipped to navigate.

Robert Pattinson flees one scrape after another but never gets ahead.Credit:Hi Gloss Entertainment

When Connie inveigles his way into the modest suburban home of a Caribbean immigrant, he takes over and makes the woman's 16-year-old granddaughter, Crystal (the impressive Taliah Webster), an unknowing accomplice. At one point she takes the rap for Connie because the police profile her skin colour over his, and you realise that he will not think twice about taking any advantage that he can.

Pattinson, for all his experimentation, has still been defining himself post-Twilight, and Good Time, together with Anton Corbijn's Life, the 2015 feature where Pattinson played a photographer trying to pin down James Dean, suggests that selfishness is the trait that he can best extrapolate. Connie is a flawed, fascinating protagonist, furiously dodging one scrape after another but never getting ahead. Lit by urban neon or dead of night television glow, Connie's seemingly inured to the chaos he causes. These times – good or bad – suit him.

Craig Mathieson has been the film critic for The Sunday Age since March 2012, having previously held the same position for Rolling Stone and The Bulletin. The former magazine editor writes widely on film, music and television, and is still able to quote sizeable chunks of the dialogue from Michael Mann's Heat.